“Oooh!” chirped Barsala, folding her goggles down over her eyes. She peered at the man’s leg, an image of the limb’s internal circuitry magnifying in her goggle’s lens. “The quality on your inner gyros is excellent. Liquid carbide receptors?”
“Can I see?” asked Keskodai. With a soft clicking of his mandibles, he leaned over to get a closer look. “Chhk-chhk, look! See the pistons! Look at the little energy regulators, aren’t they pretty?”
Raising one hand, Barsala waved at the shirren. “Kes, please hun, you’re in my light.”
“But you can see the problem, right?” asked Amril. Twitching nervously, the young man drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair. “I mean, is it the regulators? I hope it’s not the regulators. They should still be under warranty. Do you think it’s the compression circuits?”
“Calm down,” said Barsala. The words felt hollow in the face of her own burgeoning excitement. “It’ll be—”
Abruptly, his leg kicked. Trembling abruptly, the servos within whirred energetically. “Look!” yelped Amril, the lashunta’s antenna shivering, “It’s doing it again!”
“Fascinating... Kes, could you hand me the capacitor over there?”
Inhaling, Amril turned his eyes toward the ceiling of Barsala’s laboratory. “I knew I shouldn’t have got it cut rate. Stupid counterfeit augments. The price was just too good. But then it started acting up. I checked the actual prosthetic parts. I mean, I had it checked—an engineer. One of the mechanics down at the junk races said its fine...”
“They’re right,” commented Barsala, carefully separating two metal plates with two of her hands while magnifying her lenses with another. “In as far as the hardware is in working order. Whatever the problem is, it’s with the... Kes, please, you’re in my light again... it’s with the software.”
Another juddering tremor flew through Amril’s leg. He leaned up in the chair, excitedly. “I knew it! I mean, I knew you’d be able to figure it out. The moment I saw your vids, I knew Dr. B was the right person for the job! What are you going to do?”
“Did you hear that, Chhk-chhk? Our friend Barsala’s an expert.”
“I am hardly an expert on this particular subject, Chhk-Chhk, but,” she slid a glove free from her lowleft hand, exposing the chrome fingers beneath, “I do have some personal experience with cybernetic prosthetics.” Flexing her fingers, she slid back a thumb-sized port on the back of her palm. “Rudimentary system scan,” she explained. “My prosthetic has a proprietary Helix Computing interface, I’ll log into your software, give it a quick scan, and check the integration files to your wetware.”
Illustration by Alexandur Alexandrov from Starfinder Tech Revolution.
Glancing up at Keskodai, Amril asked “What does that mean?”
The shirren gave a soft shrug, his multifaceted insectile eyes seeming to widen in wonder.
Carefully, Barsala unwound a small connector cable from one of her many pockets, sliding one end into the port on her hand. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine. I’ll go for a manual interface, so it’ll be more secure. Your internal firewall’s up to date?”
“I... think so?” tried the lashunta, hesitantly, as the biohacker slid the cable into his leg’s interface port. “I had a new one installed last week, after the twitching started.”
“Fascinating,” murmured the kasatha, drumming her fingers across a set of hard-light keys on her holographic display. “There’s some redundant files here. I can’t see any function for them. Do you have anything stored in them?”
“Couple of vid shows.” replied Amril. “Don’t look in the download section, please. I might have downloaded them illegally.”
With a few more taps from her three non-interfaced hands, Barsala announced, “Scanning now. Wait.” A sharp pause cut her voice silent. Then, glancing at the man’s cybernetic leg, she said “This is odd. The files are duplicating.” A second hard-light window appeared on the biohacker’s display—quickly joined by another. Then another.
“Chhk-chhk wants to know if that’s bad.” enquired Keskodai. “It looks bad.”
A series of digital windows blazed into life around Barsala, flaring like a cradle of stars. As they did, Amril’s leg shuddered violently, its pistons whirring at a fanatical speed, showering crackling sparks across the floor. “We’ve got exponential duplication!” yelled Barsala. “These aren’t redundant files—someone’s using them as a back door! Kes, quick—”
Abruptly, Barsala’s hand twisted upward, violently pulling her trailing cable from Amril’s port. The biohacker gave a sharp yelp as her cybernetic fingers tensed into claws and turned toward her. Violently, her rogue hand lashed out, clawing and swiping at her face.
“My! This is exciting!” chittered Keskodai. “I knew this would be a thrilling field trip. Do you need one of the inhibitors?” He asked nonchalantly, scanning a wide array which hung from the wall.
“The blue one!” called Barsala, latching two free hands around her rebellious prosthetic. Her cybernetic hand continued to flail, lashing out with her fingertips. She staggered back, wrestling frantically with her hand.
Quickly, Keskodai scooped up a sturdy metal cylinder marked with a blue label and hurled it over to the biohacker. Catching it deftly with her last free hand, Barsala wrestled her cybernetic hand down onto a cluttered workbench with the other two, scattering small vials and tubes. Holding her thrashing, violent hand down, she tugged open the interface port once again. “Okay,” she muttered, “that should override my biological systems long enough to isolate this thing...”
“What is it?” cried Amril, eyes wide in shock.
“Offensive countermeasure” replied Barsala. “Someone left a sentient computer virus in your prosthetic’s firmware.”
Amril sat bolt upright, looking down at his leg in panic. “A virus?”
Rolling up her sleeve, Barsala pushed the canister containing the inhibitor against her upper arm. It gave a soft hiss as the contents discharged, filling her bloodstream. “It was protecting a backdoor into your augment.” She explained, dropping the canister. Her arteries radiated a momentary glow. “Know anyone who’d want to hack your systems?” she asked.
“Hacking?” spat Amril. “No! Definitely not! I don’t have any enemies!” he paused. “Actually, wait, maybe it might be...”
With a series of thuds, Barsala’s augmented hand forced itself up from was held. Gritting her teeth in agitation, she grunted and grabbed a micro-welding torch. “Right!” she declared, crackling it to life. “Time for some surgical reprogramming!”
As she began to rewire the hand’s circuitry in deft, sharp moves, Keskodai watched in fascination. “Hmm,” he pondered, tapping a thin claw-tip against his chin. “Chhk-chhk wants to know if you can simply eject the hardware.” he asked. “If it’s trying to kill you, that is. Perhaps we can take it off and put it in a box for now?”
“Don’t need to” replied Barsala, her eyes focused intently on the work. A small shower of sparks flew from her hand. “I’ve confined the virus to a partition of the limb’s memory, which should let me get root access to... wait, Chhk-chhk wants to know?”
“Ah, yes,” trilled the shirren cheerfully. “You see, at this stage in larval development, we’ve formed a telepathic bond that’s strong enough for in-depth conversation. In fact, I’d be quite happy to discuss—”
“Maybe later.” she interrupted, dropping the torch onto the workbench, and opening another section of the limb. “I think... yes, let me just finish this scan... okay, system’s clear.”
Amril rubbed his head, his antennas drooping. “Is that it?” he asked. “The virus is gone?”
The biohacker slowly let go of her hand and bent each finger to test her control of her prosthetic, looking carefully for signs of any malicious intent. For a few moments she held her breath. Then, slowly, she gave a sigh of relief. “Scan’s clear,” she said. “Virus is gone. I’ve kept a log of if you want to watch it. In either case, your leg should be fine now.”
Whirling around to face her, Amril rubbed his eyes. “That’s... that’s amazing.” he muttered. “Thank you. Thank you so much. It feels a lot better.”
Flexing her fingers once more, Barsala reached into her pocket to recover her surgical glove. “We’ll still need to find out who hacked the limb.” She announced. “You’re quite sure you don’t have any enemies?”
Clapping his hands together, Amril inhaled. “Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true. Y’see...”
A heavy thud echoed through the laboratory. Somewhere in the distance, the ever-present hum of the power systems fell abruptly silent. The lab’s internal lights shuddered to darkness, replaced with the ghostly glow of emergency red illumination. “What?” snapped the biohacker.
“Okay,” admitted Amril, “so, I didn’t want to mention it, but I’m part of a group of hackers...”
Keskodai held up a hand. “Don’t want to interrupt” he said, “but I can sense six minds moving towards us. They seem... hostile. Friends of yours?”
“No!” yelled Amril, glancing around the room. “Okay, look, so we were sniffing around some corporate files, and...”
A heavy thud echoed from the other side of the laboratory’s door.
Barsala sighed, shaking her head, and calmly started to load her needler pistol. “And this was meant to be my weekend off.”
About The Author
Alison Cybe is a fantasy and horror author with other work featured in numerous horror and sci-fi/fantasy publications. They have a degree in Film & Media with a minor in sociology and media. They’re non-binary with pronouns they/them. They were born in Scotland and has written extensively on inclusion and positive representation within gaming communities in particular with relation to LGBTQ+ and transgender visibility in gaming publications and blogs. Their interests include Celtic mythology, transhumanism, model kits and pet rats.
About Iconic Encounters
Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.
